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50books_pocAmitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines, Circle of Reason, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Hungry Tide, and Sea of Poppies
It's hard to know how to summarize the work of Amitav Ghosh; he never does the same thing twice. I can't even give you an idea of the scope of his work with the notes below, because it's just the novels I've read so far; I'm missing a novel, a memoir/historical investigation, and a book of essays, and that's just what's been published in the U.S. I could, I guess, say that all of his work that I've read so far deals with one or a dozen of the cultures contributing to modern India, but that's so capacious a subject I might as well just say, "Well, he writes about people," and have done with it. (Except then I'd be leaving out the dolphins, swamps, fruit flies, and sailing ships.) He's remarkable not just in the range of his content but the range of styles: he has written a Modernist literary novel, a science fiction thriller, a magic realist novel without magic, a contemporary literary novel, and an historical adventure.
Full review at my journal.
Karin Lowachee, Warchild, Burndive, and Cagebird
Set of loosely connected space operas; each has a different protagonist and the plots occasionally overlap, but what unites them is a common background and similar thematic concerns about the effects of growing up in wartime on adolescents. (All adolescent boys, in this case, but she depicts enough male sexual abuse and prostitution that the only thing that would seem to distinguish male experience from female is the lack of unwanted pregnancy or fears thereof.) It's not necessary to read the books in any particular order or to read one to understand any of the others.
Lowachee is gifted at creating distinctive narrative voices for and empathetic connections with her different and sometimes unlikable protagonists: Jos Musey of Warchild has been so traumatized he can barely feel his own emotions or recall his own memories, Ryan Azarcon of Burndrive is a spoiled rich boy drug addict, Yuri Kirov of Cagebird is a pirate whose use, abuse, and murder of others isn't glossed over. And all of them are compelling and comprehensible and sometimes surprisingly likable. Jos is probably the most conventionally appealing character, but I have to admit to a weakness for bratty Ryan Azarcon; on her Website Lowachee mentions her admiration for Maureen McHugh, and Burndrive in general reminds me of McHugh's Half the Day Is Night, a book split between the perspectives of a rich and privileged businesswomen and her reserved bodyguard who pays prices for survival that the privileged don't see. No one else seems to like this book -- it gets by far the least notice of McHugh's novels -- but I am extraordinarily fond of it. It's hard to be that clear-sighted about privilege and not have the reader end up hating the privileged. That clear sight -- about prices paid, limited choices, and complicity in abusive regimes -- is also displayed by Lowachee.
Full review at my journal.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is one of the few known autobiography written by a black female slave; most other accounts of black women's lives under slavery were dictated to other people, frequently white or male or both.
Full review at my journal. NB: It's intermixed with comments on Jean Fagan Yellin's biography of Jacobs; Yellin is white.
It's hard to know how to summarize the work of Amitav Ghosh; he never does the same thing twice. I can't even give you an idea of the scope of his work with the notes below, because it's just the novels I've read so far; I'm missing a novel, a memoir/historical investigation, and a book of essays, and that's just what's been published in the U.S. I could, I guess, say that all of his work that I've read so far deals with one or a dozen of the cultures contributing to modern India, but that's so capacious a subject I might as well just say, "Well, he writes about people," and have done with it. (Except then I'd be leaving out the dolphins, swamps, fruit flies, and sailing ships.) He's remarkable not just in the range of his content but the range of styles: he has written a Modernist literary novel, a science fiction thriller, a magic realist novel without magic, a contemporary literary novel, and an historical adventure.
Full review at my journal.
Karin Lowachee, Warchild, Burndive, and Cagebird
Set of loosely connected space operas; each has a different protagonist and the plots occasionally overlap, but what unites them is a common background and similar thematic concerns about the effects of growing up in wartime on adolescents. (All adolescent boys, in this case, but she depicts enough male sexual abuse and prostitution that the only thing that would seem to distinguish male experience from female is the lack of unwanted pregnancy or fears thereof.) It's not necessary to read the books in any particular order or to read one to understand any of the others.
Lowachee is gifted at creating distinctive narrative voices for and empathetic connections with her different and sometimes unlikable protagonists: Jos Musey of Warchild has been so traumatized he can barely feel his own emotions or recall his own memories, Ryan Azarcon of Burndrive is a spoiled rich boy drug addict, Yuri Kirov of Cagebird is a pirate whose use, abuse, and murder of others isn't glossed over. And all of them are compelling and comprehensible and sometimes surprisingly likable. Jos is probably the most conventionally appealing character, but I have to admit to a weakness for bratty Ryan Azarcon; on her Website Lowachee mentions her admiration for Maureen McHugh, and Burndrive in general reminds me of McHugh's Half the Day Is Night, a book split between the perspectives of a rich and privileged businesswomen and her reserved bodyguard who pays prices for survival that the privileged don't see. No one else seems to like this book -- it gets by far the least notice of McHugh's novels -- but I am extraordinarily fond of it. It's hard to be that clear-sighted about privilege and not have the reader end up hating the privileged. That clear sight -- about prices paid, limited choices, and complicity in abusive regimes -- is also displayed by Lowachee.
Full review at my journal.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is one of the few known autobiography written by a black female slave; most other accounts of black women's lives under slavery were dictated to other people, frequently white or male or both.
Full review at my journal. NB: It's intermixed with comments on Jean Fagan Yellin's biography of Jacobs; Yellin is white.
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